


Thus kindly, I scatter

by hunnyB



Series: RWBY Fanfictions Volume 8 [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Baby Yang Xiao Long, Canon Divergence, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Memories, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Kidnapping, Mentioned Summer Rose (RWBY), Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Promises, Rescue Missions, Spoilers, Spoilers: Volume 8 (RWBY), Volume 8 (RWBY), Volume 8 Chapter 9 Spoilers, Yang Xiao Long Needs a Hug, Yang vs Salem, traumatic childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29518692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunnyB/pseuds/hunnyB
Summary: "Summer Rose, my mom"
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Ruby Rose & Taiyang Xiao Long & Yang Xiao Long, Raven Branwen & Yang Xiao Long, Summer Rose & Yang Xiao Long
Series: RWBY Fanfictions Volume 8 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2198331
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	Thus kindly, I scatter

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I can't get over Yang talking about Summer and referring to her as 'mom', so this is an alternative version of Volume 8 Chapter 9  
> My heart is weak, what can I do *sniff
> 
> Anyway, Hope you enjoy the reading.  
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!!
> 
> And follow me on twitter (@FirecrackerKoG) for constant updates and more RWBY contents <3

So they've done it.

They've entered the whale, reunited with Oscar - and Emerald surprisingly, but as long as she doesn't do anything they let her walk with them -, and managed to reach the side of the monstrous Grimm.

Nothing could have made them happier than see the navy sky after being surrounded by creepy shades of red and black for this whole time.

But of course, when they were just a literal jump away from freedom, they ran into Salem - or well, she ran into them, actually.

The fight can not even be described as one since they all together don't stand a chance against the immortal witch, but they've pulled something off - Yang admits to herself that the moment she's seen her upper body explode she'd felt pride swell up in her chest.

But now they're back at nothing, Grimm hands wrapped around their limbs and heads to pin them down as Salem speaks to Oscar, fingers pressing in his skull and anger burning her pale face.

"Why do you keep coming back?" she slowly yet firmly asks. The question is of course referred to the soul locked inside the farm boy's body, not to Oscar himself, but for the young huntsman it sounds just as threatening.

He is shaking, Yang notices, and maybe that's part of the reason she finds the courage to speak.

"Why do _you_?" She spites back, leaning on her elbows to lift her upper body from the floor.

"All of this endless death... because something bad happened to you once upon a time!?" The woman's pale face turns to her and her hands part from Oscar's skin.

"Nobody gets a fairytale ending."

Yang can feel nervousness pools up in her stomach, but she grits her teeth and swallows it down.

She looks up to meet Salem's narrowed gaze descend on her, her neutrally stoic expression framing her red irids and dark eyes, and all she sees is the woman who brings death and sorrow, the one who's trying to destroy the world because of her selfishness, the one who took everything away from her.

"Everything I've lost—" she cuts herself off, voice thick with emotion "Every _person_ I've lost, it's because of you."

_Raven was scared and ran away, twice._

_Summer fought until the end, and perished._

Everyone she held dear, even Penny and Pyrrha who lost their lives in the fall of Beacon, has been ripped from her heart and crushed underneath this woman's heel.

Yang looks up and sees the person who ruins the world with her sole existence, the one who robbed her chance to live a normal life and marked Ruby's forever. The cause of her father's absence for most of their childhood and consequentially the culprit of her uncle's drunkenness.

Salem steps in front of her, eyes sharpened but with a glint of genuine curiousity. "And who is it I've taken from you, girl?"

Yang feels tears prickling her eyes as the thought of _her_ pervades _her mind,_ but **they don't fall, they just make their precense known with a stinging burn.

Just how she was used to when her father was too depressed to help them and Ruby too young to understand, when she had to keep everything together - herself included - her eyes mechanically blink back tears she knows she can't shed.

"Summer Rose." Her name dries her throat and blurs her sight with dusted memories. "My mom."

It feels forbidden and wrong, but she missed saying it.

Salem's face shifts in interest and she suddenly leans closer, a gentle smile gracing her features. "Her again." she says, and Yang shivers.

' _Your mother said those words to me. She was wrong too.'_

Yang clenches her fists. "You're Summer Rose's daughter too?" Salem asks baffled, appearing truthfully confused.

Yang's gaze falls down on the floor under the woman's feet, but Salem's hand instantly wraps around her jaw to hold her head up again, fingers digging in her skin. She tilts her head to the side, giving a closer look. "You don't quite resemble her."

Yang's can't shake the sudden sorrow flickering in her purple eyes, and Salem hums. She releases her face abruptly and stands up.

"I know you are Ruby Rose's older sibling." she adds, walking around her in small, slow steps. Her eyes wonder on everyone else before drifting back down on her with a knowing smile. "You two must be half-sisters then."

Jaune and Ren are silent in the back of the open room, staring at their friends from where the Grimm hands pin them down. Oscar has his head tilted to his side, looking down worriedly at Yang.

"Now that I think about it, you actually remind me of someone." the witch says thoughtfully and Yang's eyes widen in fear and unmasked rage. She desperately grasps the hope that the woman won't remember her mother, because there is only a way she could effettively know.

Salem must notice her nervousness because she steps close once again and kneels down. There's a beat of silence before she speaks and Yang braces herself, still hopeful—

"The Spring Maiden."

Her heart shatters. Though she can't see them, she's sure she knows what expressions her friends have right now.

_Disappointment, anger, betrayal._

"You're Raven Branwen's daughter, aren't you?" the gentle tone and easy smile hides a hint of something sharper underneath the surface but Yang can't quite put her fingers on it.

What's the purpose of all this? What is she trying to accomplish?

"You two only _look_ alike, but have a completely different personality." she states, and Yang fists her hands, keeping at bay the anger burning her soul and threatening to burst into flames. "Ruby Rose and her mother on the other hand..." Yang's heart skips a bit and her gaze, which had subconsciously drifted down to evade her friends' stares, now flow back to meet Salem.

At her sudden reaction the woman stops short and smiles as if she is having fun playing a game whose rules are only known by her.

"What do you know about Summer!? What did you do to her!?" Yang snarls, purple fading to red as she fights the Grimm hands to confront the witch, but they only tighten around her, squeezing until she lets a pained cry past her lips.

She closes her eyes and Summer's small frame appears in front of her, backing cookies with humming a song, inviting Yang to touch the swell of her tummy to feel her little sister inside kicking, pulling them both in her arms when she comes back from a mission, reading stories with her gentle voice until they fall asleep.

Yang clings tightly to those memories.

"Summer Rose was just like your sister. Hopeful and always optimistic, a rare sight." it feels like when Yang's father talked to her about Raven, only this time it's Salem doing it, humanity's greatest evil, the one directly involved with her death. "But she failed to understand Ozma's real intentions when he set his eyes on her and her team."

Yang blinks the red back and her anger dissipates, replaced by confusion and fear. "W-What..."

"The same way he did with you and your team, he lured them to think they would be fighting for a greater good," she racconts. A smile pulls at her lips and a chuckle escapes her lips, acting like she has just told a funny joke. She looks up to make eye contact with Oscar and her humorless face shifts in disappointment. "when they were just kids giving up on their lives, in vain."

Oscar advises a slightly panicked Ozpin to not interfere, despite the intoxicating anger and pain he feels burning in his gut as if they were his own.

Yang shakes her head. "It's not in vain! Protecting the people we love it's not—"

"Oh my dear girl." Salem's voice grows deeper of a fraction, and Yang stiffens at the change of attitude. "You haven't the slightest idea."

Yang wants to speak, she desperately wants to shout her it's not stupid because it would mean _they_ _all -_ Summer, Penny, Pyrrha - died in vain, that these lives mean nothing when it's not true, but before she can find her voice she sees the woman approach her again.

Yang doesn't have the slightest clue of what she's going to say because her face is serious and sharp, but her eyes also show pity and suppressed anger and so much more—

"Your dear professor was well aware of Summer Rose's suicidal mission, but he didn't stop her." At the end, the words were beyond what she'd immagined to hear. They cut through her skin and pierce straight to her pounding heart.

The world around her starts to spin and twirl, and all Yang can do is grip the ground helpless. "He only needs people to fight his battle. Summer was special, but at the end she was only the umpteenth sacrifice."

' _I love you Yang.' she tells her, but the corners of her lips curl downward. Yang hugs her tighter, hoping it will help chase away whatever is haunting her mother._

_'I love you too mom, come back soon, okay?' she tells her and Summer nods fondly, eyes falling behind dark curtains while she's put to bed. She feels the woman's lips press heavily on her forehead and her eyes drift close, but before she can fall asleep Summer calls her and asks her to promise something._

"You're following someone who sent your mother to her death."

Yang squeezes her eyes shut and let the tears finally flow down her cheeks and chin, drops after drops staining the ground under her.

_'Yang, keep yourself and your sister safe, okay?'_

_'Why mom? Where are you going?'_

_'Just promise me you will.'_

_'Of course I will! I won't ever let anything happen to Ruby!'_

_'Thank you, Yang. I'm so lucky to have you.'_

' _I'm so lucky to have you'_ , she said. She had beheaved strangely in her last few days - Yang vaguely remembers in her crowded, dusty memories - so the thought of Summer already knowing she was going to die in that specific mission had crossed Yang's mind before, when she was old enough to think back about her without dropping in despair and panicking.

But Ozpin, the man that led them to this very war, the one who kept so much from them until now, had done the same to Summer's team? He... He knew about her going to die?

"And because of him, for the same reason as your mother, you'll lose your sister too." Whatever spark of self-control she has musterd until now falls under the sheer horror taking over her face at the statement.

"That girl was damned the very moment she first opened her eyes." A short sob slips past her lips and if she didn't known better, she would have believed Salem's grieved expression was real.

Summer was special, just like Ruby is. Ozpin knows, and that is why he helped them, that is why he led them where they are now, pulling them forward in between secrets and lies until they found a way to walk by themselves and grasp the truth.

Ozpin knew Summer was going to die and didn't stop her, and now he wants to do the same with Ruby?

"Your Grace." Salem's face straighten up as a new voice, low and raspy, steps in.

Yang feels a new pair of hands emerge from the floor and fingers dig in her skin to pull her down, but she's too dazed and drowned in her thoughts to rely on her senses. She misses Hazel coming to their rescue and fighting Salem, she misses her body being pulled free from the restraints because she still can't _breath_ , and she can't remember who helped her up and guided her out of the whale.

She misses everything going on in the world right now except for the voice ringing in her ears, scolding and playful, joyful and sad, and the soft caress on her cheek.

_'I'll never leave you.' she says, and little Yang hugs her tightly as she sobs._

Now, Yang feels on the verge of tears, anxiousness creeping up along her back and grief squeezing her chest suffocatingly, but there's no hand cradling her face and wiping her tears away, no voice comforting her, no smile waiting for her on the other side of the door.

Only an endless, grim void.


End file.
